


Fourteen Reasons Why He Shouldn't Marry Her

by cairn



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Angst, F/M, Self Confidence Issues, Self-Esteem Issues, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-17
Updated: 2015-08-17
Packaged: 2018-04-15 05:46:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4595187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cairn/pseuds/cairn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sumia catalogues her faults like laundry lists, like shopping lists, as though by defining them she can make them disappear, checking them off as easily as shipping something through the convoy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fourteen Reasons Why He Shouldn't Marry Her

**Author's Note:**

> In some of Sumia's supports, she gives off a very acute feeling of self-deprecation. I've always wondered how she conquered that in order to give Chrom his pies.

  
  
1\. Her looks. Tangled hair, sticky brow, an average face and the body of a mediocre warrior who has a weakness for sweet pies. Split ends, large feet, uneven eyebrows, callused hands, a seam of scarred flesh where a Risen had once attacked her bare thigh. Sumia stares into the mirror only when she is certain she is the only person who can bear witness to her own flaws, pulling her hair back as though willing it to become less uncontrollable, less eager to fly into her mouth when she tries to speak. It doesn’t work. 

2\. Her poise. The joke of the training grounds is that Frederick doesn’t just clear pebbles for his lord but also for her, for if even one remained she would trip on it and be sent to the medical tent, rendering her useless. Not to mention the endless scabs on her knees and the palms of her hands that catch her when she falls, the one time she fell from her pegasi onto Lon’qu and nearly caused a medical emergency as he seemed near a heart attack, and the time she yanked on Cordelia’s hair accidentally to stop herself from falling and received a severe talking to that even Chrom turned to watch. Neither girl had been able to look in his direction for weeks afterwards. 

3\. Her discarded lances. Flecks of wood cover the small corner of the training grounds she uses, remnants of broken shafts and attempts to stop enemy arrows that failed. Each misplaced blow, each chink in her armor, each failed stroke is catalogued in these lances, in chips broken off and metal tips blunted. Each dent is a mark from an enemy’s blow she could only haphazardly block, each snapped ending a fall from her pegasi. His sword, by contrast, is perfect – a masterpiece of metal, or dragon’s tooth, if the legend is to be believed – and when she sees it up close, mounted on his hip next to her on her pegasi, there isn’t a scratch on it. 

4\. Her pies. Cooking is a struggle when burns seem to appear without notice, but these recipes, with each set of ingredients sent for through the convoy at black-market prices, are different. These are for him, and they are therefore much better and much worse. She works tirelessly, avoiding Olivia’s tentative questions and Gaius’s few attempts to steal prototypes, sampling rhubarb, peaches, apples, almonds – anything she thinks he could enjoy. It takes her fifteen times to make her rhubarb-and-fiddlehead masterpiece, but she avoids thinking about the other thirty-some that floundered, spat their filling into the oven, or burned black as pitch. 

5\. The realm. How could Ylisse stand for a queen with a chip on her shoulder, a queen who grew up shoveling pegasi dung and once fell in it, to the great amusement of her companions? How could the advisors fail to advise him to leave her behind as a small amusement for times of battle, where undoubtedly his wife would not stray? How could she live in a castle – her, who has never been closer to nobility than having tea with Maribelle once? Sumia knows no one would stand for it, but thoughts of ancient stone walls and banners embroidered with the Mark of Naga slip into her dreams regardless.

6\. Cordelia. Her best friend is beautiful, strong, kind, intelligent, a list of adjectives that Sumia could never stop spouting. She is tall, well built, and devotion is her middle name. Sumia is a growing colt beside her, tripping over her too-long legs and wobbling even while still in place; Cordelia never takes a step without purpose, and she never feels the need to be anyone else. She would never read books like Sumia does, and Sumia hides her novels for a few days before desperately reaching for one after Cordelia is complimented by Chrom one day and she needs an escape, because gods, they would just be too perfect for one another, such beautiful people, such a glorious couple. 

7\. Maribelle. She has the noble blood, the perfect posture, the powdered face and ringlet curls. She’s the sharp wit and the healing touch, their staunch princess of politeness who tuts at Sumia’s stumbles and frazzled hair. Sumia sees how the men look at Maribelle, she recognizes their urge to protect such a delicate woman, who carries a parasol instead of a sword to the battlefield. Even so, Sumia knows that behind the lace is a spine of iron, not porcelain. And she is close to Chrom, closer than Sumia will ever be, the closeness of an intertwined childhood and a similar way of life. When Sumia wears a dress, she thinks of Maribelle and shuts her eyes.

8\. Olivia. How suddenly can someone enter a camp and crush Sumia’s dreams, how suddenly can someone be so unassuming and yet quickly have half the people at camp wrapped around her finger? How easily can someone appear like one of the nymphs Sumia reads about, not one spot of paint on her cheeks nor one comb through her hair necessary to make people stop in their tracks? And when she dances, Sumia has seen Chrom’s eyes on her, seen him pause in sheathing his sword just to make sure he doesn’t miss a step.

9\. Sully. She’s strong in a way Sumia will never be, the kind of strength that does not falter nor question itself. When she wields a lance, which is almost always, people step out of her way; no one questions her aspirations to be the Bull of the party. She can make Chrom laugh easiest of any of the Shepherds save perhaps Lissa or Robin, and Sumia swears once she caught him half-singing to one of her drinking songs. She’s probably one of the few women Chrom doesn’t instinctively go easy on during sparring matches due to habitual ‘gentlemanly ways’ that Sully mocks incessantly with a grin. Sumia watches when Sully touches Chrom far more than any of the others, smacking on the back and ruffling hair, and clenches her lance tightly.

10\. His fighting. It’s so quick, nimble, for someone his size. It’s flashy – she can be objective, sort of – but she likes it, likes the gleam of his sword when he spins it around after a well placed hit. In battle, she looks for the flutter of his cape when he leaps forwards to slash upwards in the familiar motion that all knights are taught, but he makes differently, somehow. His destruction in training is so well-known that the Shepherds tend to avoid him, but it is so easy to urge her pegasi closer, even just a little bit, braving the possibility of broken crates flying her way to see the muscles on his arm stand out while he turns. His strength is a marvel, and hers so much lesser by comparison.

11\. His smile. Gods, his smile. She’d never known a flash of teeth could be so arresting, never known that lips could halt her in her tracks. If she tries to hang around Lissa when she is near her brother, she can’t be faulted – he smiles more around Lissa, jokes like a brother does, like she imagines he might if she was even slightly more beautiful, stronger in battle, less clumsy. Sumia can barely imagine him directing his smile fully at her without smacking herself (once in the face) for doing so. The image is so jarring, so unrealistic, so obviously fabricated that she begins to cry, and not because of the sting of her cheek. 

12\. The fortunes. Flowers are never kind to her on this subject. If a string of petals fall onto the ground, plucked to shreds by her merciless fingers, they never fall favorably. They always say ‘loves me not,’ they tell her with a mother’s kind words that she is not fated for this, that she should stick to her training routine and ignore such fatalistic thoughts as love. The flowers are delicate, soft, and Sumia wishes she could do more than stare at the pile of petals time she tries again, with the thought that after that one battle, after that quick save, surely – surely – he could notice her now.

13\. Her books. Every time she reads of a beautiful girl with a blinding smile, always the hero’s love interest, always with long eyelashes and thin wrists, she sees herself instead. In these stories, she is perfect – she can cast Cure as well as Aversa’s Night, she can wield lances with perfect precision, cutting down targets yards away with a flick of her wrist, and she never stumbles as she walks away from the battlefield without a scratch. And then she finishes the novel, and she is just Sumia.

14\. Her love. It’s terrifying, the depth of it, the insatiable pull to look at him – just once more, gods, certainly he won’t notice, he won’t be looking this way – the drag of her consciousness to his presence as insistent as a lodestar winking in the sky. She can feel her words fumbling in her mouth, see herself tripping before she does so, her hair sticking to her lips and dirt on her knees, but still she walks over to him to try to say something – anything, just make him notice you, anything will do – and see him turn to face her.


End file.
